February 2026: MORE PAINT Seattle 2023-2025 Brandon Bye

MORE PAINT
Seattle 2023-2025
Brandon Bye

The city revealed itself slowly, through what refused to stay gone.

MORE PAINT combines urban landscape photography with unsentimental prose and an evolving, participatory installation. It reflects the environment and lays bare Seattle’s struggle for civic control between 2023 and 2025, a period marked by rapid growth and political tension. As the city added nearly
36,000 new residents, the population climbed to roughly 816,000. With growth came growing pains: more tents, more tags, and a public caught between looking away and cracking down. Graffiti and homelessness aren’t just problems. They’re symptoms. Signals. Evidence that the ecosystem is under strain.

City crews clear camps and paint over walls. Then the camps come back. So does the graffiti. Laws loosen, tighten, reverse. A repetition. A routine. A tide. And although public opinion varies on the topics presented here, the seesaw teeters on one unanimous, if temporary, agreement—MORE PAINT. This work stays with the scene. It slows the moment down, asking for attention, looking directly at what is usually passed by, fenced off, or erased overnight. For this exhibition, photographs are sequenced with text, surfaces are written on and rewritten, and the work changes over time. Like the city itself, nothing here is fixed. Paint accumulates. Voices overlap. What’s seen is temporary. The cycle isn’t.

About The Artist:
Brandon Bye is a Seattle-based photographer and writer. In 2023, he began spending long stretches of time in parts of the city most people pass through quickly—or don’t go to at all—places repeatedly cleared, repainted, and redefined. His work brings together documentary photography, writing, film, and installation, with an emphasis on observation and physical presence, allowing interpretation to follow experience rather than lead it. MORE PAINT is his first book and exhibition project, developed with editor Lisa van Dam-Bates, publisher Nate Gowdy, and in ongoing conversation with artists and community members who live within the conditions the work records.

See more at: https://brandonbye.com/more-paint
Instagram: @morepaintmorepaint

Pigeon Editions is a Seattle-based independent imprint founded by photographer Nate Gowdy, dedicated to artist-driven books at the crossroads of identity, public memory, and civic accountability. Working closely with visual artists, the imprint produces intentionally designed books as critical, enduring objects. Rooted in documentary practice but expansive in form, Pigeon Editions supports work that engages history as it unfolds.

More Paint is available for pre-order here: https://brandonbye.com/more-paint-book